September 2005 Archives

AP: "An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount."

Both Kirkuk and the town of Dibis benefit from the enhanced capacity, but the biggest winners are the roughly 25,000 residents living in 13 nearby villages and settlements who had never known the luxury of running water. Some of these communities have only 25 homes; two consist solely of tent-dwellers; and two areas are home to 5,000 internally displaced people each.

The individuals responsible may never have the opportunity to see their work nor to be acknowledged by those who have benefited; security concerns in the Kirkuk area mean visitors and villagers alike are at risk.

But 25,000 more Iraqi people now have access to fresh water.

Moscow “has stepped up military-technological cooperation with Tehran,” the business daily said, citing an unidentified source.

It said top officials within Russia’s military-industrial complex decided to concentrate on arms sales to Tehran for two reasons.

“Firstly, as many weapons as possible must be sold to Iran before an international embargo against this country comes into force.”

Secondly, should the United States decide to go to war in Iran, Russia wants Iran to be well-armed to ensure that U.S. forces become at least as bogged down there as they already are in Iraq, the daily said.

“In either case, such a policy carries a high risk of creating a major international scandal, at the very least,” the newspaper commented...

The group, which opposes the city's investment in Israel and military equipment companies that do business there, said it collected about 4,500 signed petitions to place a nonbinding question about divesting the bonds on the Nov. 8 ballot.

But Julian Houston, a Middlesex County Superior Court judge, ruled Thursday that the Somerville Elections Commission had the right to refuse to certify the petitions because SDP did not follow instructions from the commission about the wording of the petition and the collection timeline...

But I learned too, during numerous candid conversations with Palestinians at all levels of society, that, in practice, few within your nation are willing to concede that I have a legitimate claim to any part of this land. I will cite one telling example...

Assad met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders two weeks ago and told them that since the international community was hounding him, he wanted attention to be more focused on the Palestinian plight, according to the report obtained by Army Radio.

Assad's statement to Hamas and Islamic Jihad was reportedly the reason for the emergency meeting between Assad and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier this week.

In the meeting Mubarak allegedly told Assad not to interfere in the Palestinian conflict, Israel Radio reported.

Researchers Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, reporting in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said a giant squid about 26 feet long attacked a baited jig, or lure, trailing below a marker buoy about 500 miles south of Tokyo, near the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacific...

...Despite the stories, however, very little is known about the giant squid. The first complete specimen, a dead animal captured by fishermen off Newfoundland, was found in 1874. Subsequent remains, either washed up on beaches or trapped in fishnets, have appeared occasionally in high latitudes -- Canadian and Japanese waters, or off Tasmania and Australia...

..."Four hours and 13 minutes after becoming snagged, the attached tentacle broke, as seen by sudden slackness in the line," the authors wrote. Once on the surface "the recovered section of tentacle was still functioning," they continued, "with the large suckers of the tentacle club repeatedly gripping the boat deck and any offered fingers."

But on precisely this point, German foreign policy under the direction of Joschka Fischer has not merely refused to join the battle. It has deliberately turned a blind eye, proceeding as if hating Jews were a normal feature of the Oriental world – like hookahs or mosques. Consequently, the “red-green” government has not treated the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as combatants waging war on Israel. Islamist suicide terror has instead been presented as a false, though, in the final analysis, comprehensible reaction to poverty and hopelessness. “It is not the violence of the second Intifada which has caused the failure of the peace process,” the Green Party member of parliament Christian Sterzing remarked in a discussion of the Fischer proposal, “it is rather the failed political process which has caused the violence.”...

The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, discovered Tuesday by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount would mark the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period.

The 2,600 year old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was discovered amidst piles of rubble discarded by the Islamic Wakf that Barkay and a team of young archaeologists and volunteers are sifting through on the grounds of a Jerusalem national park...

...The seal was found amidst thousands of tons of rubble discarded by Wakf officials at city garbage dumps six years ago, following the Islamic Trust's unilateral construction of an mosque at an underground compound of the Temple Mount known as the Solomon's Stables.

After the Antiquities Authority voiced disinterest in thoroughly sifting through the rubble discarded by the Wakf, Barkay applied -- and eventually received –a license from the Antiquities Authority to sort through the piles of earth thrown into the garbage dump in search of antiquities, and has since found scores of history-rich artifacts, from the First Temple Period until today amidst the rubble, including a large amount of pottery dating from the Bronze Ages through modern times, a large segment of a marble pillar's shaft, and over 100 ancient coins, among them several from the Hasmonean Dynasty...

The cleric, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, is Director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, which, according to ADL, has been the driving force behind the scenes pushing mainline Protestant denominations to adopt a policy of divestment against companies doing business with Israel...

..."We accept it may not be his intent to disseminate anti-Semitism, but we made it clear that was what has been done," added the rabbi. "We hope that he may reconsider his language and imagery. But the significance of this is that those people and those churches that use Sabeel's writings and theology to support their political point of view potentially may be considered accessories in the advancement of anti-Semitic theology."...

Death and injury came in the twinkling of an eye, intruding on the idyll the filmmakers had begun to capture: a suicide bomber exploded himself on Jam Nite. Yanai Weiss and Ran Baron, two musicians, and Dominique Hass, a waitress who had emigrated from France, were killed. Among the dozens injured in the powerful blast are: Avi Tabib, the security guard, who heroically saved everyone inside the bar by pushing the bomber out the doorway; and one of the three filmmakers - Jack Baxter, an American documentary producer and investigative journalist, who came to Tel Aviv and found a story to tell about present day Israel at Mike's Place.

...Pavla and Joshua continued to film, showing it all from the eye of the hurricane.

They attended the daily Mike's Place "family" gatherings till the early mornings, visited the injured in hospital, recorded the vibrant original live blues of Mike's Place, and followed preparations for the memorial service that marked the reopening of the bar. Blues By The Beach not only has footage of a suicide bombing; the film illustrates the effects of terror, the aftermath and moving on. Pavla and Joshua see a real-life dramatic script writing itself before their camera and understand that the emotional upheaval in their personal relationship is an integral part of the Israeli Experience and the story of the Mike's Place bombing.

Suddenly, a middle-aged man wearing a black “F the President” T-shirt rushes the stage, screaming at Kanj, “I’m TIRED of this CRAP! You people keep bringing this up! This is supposed to be an ANTI-WAR rally, not an ANTI-ISRAEL rally!”

Kanj yells back, into the microphone. Others in the crowd stand up and join in the shouting match.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has arrived in San Diego.

Red-vested “peace monitors” converge on T-shirt Man, trying to contain this sudden outburst of dissent. They are followed closely by the San Diego Police Department, who quickly take control of the situation and lead the man away.

As T-shirt Man exits stage right, ANSWER front man Carl Muhammed enters from stage left, strutting in front of the platform and waving a large Palestinian flag. Carl and his radical Palestinian posse face down the angry Israel supporters, and the entire rally begins to descend into chaos.

In an effort to regain control of the rally, CodePink maven Barbara Jaffe-Rose takes the podium, declaring her solidarity with the Palestinian cause. “As an anti-war Jew, I support the Palestinian Right of Return, and demand the end of U.S. aid to Israel.” She attempts to lead the crowd in a cheer: “Not one penny, not one dime, U.S. out of Palestine!”

It flops...

Mr. Massad, an assistant professor of Arab studies, easily cleared the hurdle of his fifth-year review in the spring and is undergoing a tenure review this academic year, a complicated process that often takes more than six months to complete.

While Mr. Massad's future at Columbia poses a problem for an administration seeking to shed a reputation among Jewish groups, alumni, and donors that the university is a base for anti-Israel scholarship, such concerns are unlikely to outweigh several factors in his favor, a professor of Hebrew literature in Mr. Massad's department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures, Dan Miron, said.

By denying tenure to Mr. Massad, Columbia president Lee Bollinger and the university's trustees would risk a backlash from faculty members who would accuse Columbia of yielding to pressure from the press and from Jewish groups, Mr. Miron said...

Fearful of the peacenik label, Democrats are still reluctant to challenge President Bush on Iraq, no matter how ugly the news from Baghdad. Opposing Roberts is much easier. It shows that when it comes to social issues like abortion, left-leaning interest groups still hold sway with Democrats who would be president...

The evidence that some radical mosques have been perverted into terrorist hatcheries has been mounting for years. The notorious Finsbury Park mosque in London incubated jihadists for holy wars worldwide; among its alumni are Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker, and shoe bomber Richard Reid. Brooklyn's Al-Farooq Mosque is where Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, a rabid Egyptian cleric, incited his followers to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

Just last week, Hamid Hayat of Lodi, Calif., was indicted on federal terrorism charges; he is one of five suspected jihadis arrested earlier this year. All five attended the same Lodi mosque, and allegedly took direction from its two imams, Shabbir Ahmed and Adil Khan -- both of whom have now been deported to Pakistan.

Romney's position is the only responsible one. We will never be safe from terrorism so long as enemies within our borders keep spreading the plague of Islamist violence. Homeland security depends in part on monitoring those enemies and knowing what they're saying. Even when they're saying it in a mosque.

Sharon told ministers at the start of Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting that Israel would do everything in its power to prevent the firing of Kassam rockets at southern Israel.

"There are no restrictions on the use of any measures in order to strike at the terrorists, their equipment and where they find shelter," Sharon said at the opening of Sunday's cabinet meeting. "The instructions are unequivocal; we do not mean a one-time action here." He said the only limitation on the IDF was its "regular objective " of "not hitting civilians."
According to Sharon, "This is not a one-time thing; we are preparing for a prolonged operation."

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said he gave the IDF the green light to use all means at the IDF's disposal, including artillery fire, to create a buffer zone in areas – such as the northern Gaza Strip – from where the Kassam rockets were fired...

An IAF combat helicopter flying over Gaza fired a missile towards a vehicle carrying the Palestinian terrorists.

According to an initial Zaka report, three people were reported killed in the air-attack, while two were said to be wounded.

The army announced that its forces carried out an interception of a car that was transporting Khalil and another man, Aya Latif Sheikh Khalil, who were the heads of Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.

According to the IDF, the killed terrorists were responsible for the murder of the Hatuel family in May of 2004.

Tali Hatuel and her four young daughters were gunned down at point blank range on the Kissufim road.

Local police departments filed 58 incident reports in which Jews were subjected to possible hate crimes in 2004 – a victimization rate 35 percent higher than the rate in 2003, making Jews, after blacks, the most frequently victimized minority group in Massachusetts, data collected by the state Executive Office of Public Safety show. At the same time, the State Police office received the smallest number of hate-crime incident reports from police departments from around the state in the last five years. Additionally, Boston’s nationally acclaimed Community Disorders Unit in 2004 investigated fewer hate crime cases than it has since 1995, the first year for which records were available.

For detectives, prosecutors and officials at the Anti-Defamation League contacted by the Advocate, the fact that anti-Semitic incidents have rarely resulted in hate crime charges, let alone verdicts, against perpetrators reflects the complex nature of proving hate crimes in court...

I want to do so not only as a relative of one of the criminals he was trying to bring to justice, but also as an Austrian citizen who had often wondered why it was he and not official bodies that were occupied with such cases. What he did was needed not only from a juridical and political point of view; his mere presence and intervention also constituted a most important contribution to public discourse and private concern...

The Syrian authorities have covered and continue to cover Alois Brunner and he may never pay for his crimes. Germany, Austria, Slovakia, France and Poland currently seek his extradition, but the Syrians have been totally uncooperative in response to all these requests.

BRICUP was created in response to a Palestinian call for the boycott. It also lobbies on behalf of Palestinian universities and against the Israeli occupation. It has scheduled public discussions on campuses in London, Birmingham, York and Sussex.

"The boycott is moving on extremely well judged by the amount of support coming into us and the willingness of universities to set up meetings to discuss it," Dr. Hilary Rose, one of BRICUP's founders, said in a September 20 interview with England's The Guardian.

On Friday, a conference called "Fear of the Other and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" began at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The conference was called in part to discuss the boycott and was organized by an organization called The Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. The organization does not itself support the boycott, but it encourages people to visit the PA's universities in order to see for themselves the difficulties faced by students and teachers there...

In an official statement, the municipality said the closures are the result of the security assessments that were passed onto Sderot mayor Eli Moyal during a meeting with heads of the defense establishment. Municipality heads will reconvene on Sunday to decide on further steps.

Three Qassam rockets landed in Sderot on Saturday afternoon, injuring four people...

"There was a common position among the European Union members that, if the military parade included any slogans that attacked our allies, we would leave," said a diplomat.

"The military attaches from the embassies of France, Italy, Greece and Poland were present at the parade, and when they saw the slogans they promptly left," said another diplomat.

At the parade, Iran showed off six of its Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missiles sporting banners reading "Death to America", "We will crush America under our feet", "Death to Israel" and "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth"...

"There is no mention of the Security Council" being called on to get involved immediately in an EU resolution being prepared for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, a diplomat said.

That would represent a reversal from earlier EU draft resolutions containing a call to report Iran immediately to the top U.N. decision- making body, where it could face possible sanctions...

The destroyed synagogue in the evacuated Gaza settlement of Netzarim is expected to be converted into a temporary Hamas museum in the next few days.

On Saturday members of Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades , Hamas’ military wing, plan to set up an exhibit of the terror group’s “military industry” in what used to be a synagogue.

The exhibit is set to be on display for three days, and will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

The group said in a statement that “all of the tools used by Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades to abolish the Gaza occupation will be on display.”

Hamas promises that visitors will be able to see all of the weapons, “from stones to instruments used in suicide attacks and the ‘tunnel war.’” Missiles and rockets will also be on display, the groups said.

The decision to use the synagogue for the display was not coincidental. Immediately following the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza senior Hamas members said, “The synagogues are not religious structures, as they were built illegally."...

Abad Elfgeeh, 50, was convicted of transmitting money around the world without a license from a dozen bank accounts linked to his tiny storefront in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Prosecutors said his business was used by a Yemeni cleric [Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad] convicted earlier this year of a scheme to fund al-Qaida and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Elfgeeh was not charged, however, with any terrorism-related crime.

After less than a day of deliberations, the jury convicted Elfgeeh of conspiring to run an illegal money-transmitting business, running an illegal money business and structuring bank deposits to avoid reporting laws.

Elfgeeh, who could face 15 years in prison, looked stricken but did not move or speak as the verdict was read...

...After delivering the verdict, the jury said Elfgeeh should forfeit more than $22 million, a decision that would empty the defendant's frozen bank accounts if upheld...

“With regard to dealing with the Palestinian organizations, this is our affair,” the P.A. president told reporters Thursday, when asked about the demand leveled this week by mediators from the “Quartet” — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — driving the “road map” peace plan.

Despite the requirements of the road map, Abbas has refused to disarm and dismantle Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, preferring to coax them into a cease-fire.

The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: "Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?"...

...One of the escorts confirmed on Sunday, on condition of anonymity, that the quotes in Le Canard were accurate, and that they caused great embarrassment. "It's a bit difficult to understand," the source said, "how an educated French person, who was serving in the French government during the huge celebrations of the Normandy landings, does not remember basic facts about the history of World War II, and especially Britain's role, especially in light of the fact, that France's great leader, General de Gaulle, led the operations of the Resistance from exile in London."...

"Most of the brides came from the Egyptian part of Rafah and the town of Al-Arish, which were invaded by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the border was left wide open," one source told The Jerusalem Post. He said Palestinian men were encouraged to marry Egyptians mainly because of the low expenses involved, especially the dowry.

"When you compare the situation with the Gaza Strip, it's much cheaper to marry a woman from Egypt," said another source. Some of the men were already married and had decided to take a second or third wife after discovering that Egyptian families were eager to send their daughters to a relatively better life in the Gaza Strip, the source added...

...One of the brides, who identified herself as Samira, said she agreed to marry the man she met only hours earlier "because this was an opportunity that should not be missed." Samira, 28, lived with her family in Al-Arish.

"In Egypt, it's very difficult for a woman my age to get married because I'm considered too old," she said. "Moreover, the economic situation in Egypt is not as good as in the Gaza Strip."

Another bride from Al-Arish said that she always been dreaming of marrying a Palestinian. "Palestinian men are better than Egyptian men," the 27-year-old said. "They know how to look after their wives and provide for them a decent living." ...

He took a tour of the enormous palace in the mountains that houses the gifts given to Kim Jong Il and his father - from the folks who suck-up to power.

A stuffed bear’s head from Ceausescu of Romania-fancy personal railroad cars from the Soviets. A large warthog from Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

All the gifts –except perhaps the warthog - which is now in a zoo- are labeled and arranged for display more than 60,000 of them.

On a table, Hitchens spotted a large silver box. It had initials engraved on the top. Three letters. Hmm. He picked it up. They read “C N N.” The tag said it came from Jane Fonda and Ted Turner. Nice...

Radical mosques are the spark lighting the fuse that can kill Americans. That has killed Americans. That will kill more if we let it. Such killing sprees, moreover, are plotted by young, male, Muslim militants who often enter to the United States on student and other visas from places known to sponsor or export terrorism.

None of this is news. But it is cloaked in taboo. Thus, controversy was stoked last week when Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor and potential Republican 2008 presidential hopeful, did something that you should never do in this country. Not, at least, if you want to escape the caterwauling of civil liberties extremists and a cacophony of activist Muslim organizations whose knee-jerk approach to "opposing" terror is indignant spewing at every effort made to prevent it.

He told the truth...

The rapidity of the democratization and reform of Iraq is staggering. There was no German state for four years after the Second World War. By contrast, Iraq has moved from a centralized, one-man dictatorship to a decentralized, federal republic in half that time.

Inevitably, there have been stresses and strains. In Iraq these have been amplified by the terrorism of the remnants of the fascist Baathist dictatorship and our interfering neighbors. To contain these tensions, and to defend our young democracy, requires the support of American and other troops. Foreign forces are needed to train and equip the new Iraqi armed forces and to give Iraq its own counterterrorism capability. Only the United States and its closest allies are able to provide such assistance...

"When it comes to protecting our citizens, there is no place for political correctness," Romney said at an unrelated press conference. "We should be doing more in terms of intelligence and counterterrorism in the state to protect ourselves from terrorists. We spend a lot of our resources thinking about response, but response can't protect us. We have to be able to prevent attacks."

Romney said that if U.S. intelligence officials have information that a person is "preaching messages of hate and terror," then there should be sufficient grounds to conduct surveillance on them in their places of worship.

"Surely, we have to recognize that some of this has gone on in mosques in the past," Romney said. "Most mosques are teaching doctrines of love and consideration, but there have been places of extremism where certain teachers have been identified as having been involved in or led to terrorist attacks. Let's not pretend that's not the case."...

The Associated Press and other wire services filed dispatches mentioning the report’s general finding – that not enough is being done for the 40 percent of the world’s people who live on less than $2 a day. But a September 19 Nexis search showed no news coverage of the study’s ranking of Palestinian Arabs under “Israeli occupation” higher than Algerians (103), Syrians (106), Egyptians (119), Moroccans (124) and Yemeni (151). Based on data for 2003 – a period of frequent Israeli counter-terrorism responses to the “al-Aqsa intifada” – the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip also were not far behind Tunisians (89) and Jordanians (90).

Contradicting the story-line

A great deal of news media commentary, and not a little reporting, has portrayed the Palestinian Arabs as impoverished, and forced by Israel to endure substandard if not subhuman living conditions. The U.N.’s 2005 Human Development Report suggests otherwise, the Palestinian ranking of 102 falling into the “medium human development” listing...

...Israel ranks 23 in the U.N. report. The top Arab states are the oil-rich, population poor sheikdoms of Qatar (40), United Arab Emirates (41), Bahrain (43) and Kuwait (44)

Arabs' Self-Inflicted Woes

At first glance, the 2005 study might seem to conflict with the U.N.’s 2004 Arab Human Development Report, which asserted that the standard of living for 58 percent of the Palestinian population fell below the poverty line. But without the self-inflicted damage of the Palestinian’s 2000 - 2005 terrorism war against Israel, the territories – whose economies had grown markedly in the Oslo “peace process” years of 1993 - 2000 – likely would be listed even further ahead of Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen. As the under-reported 2004 study noted, much of what really ails the Arab countries, and the Palestinian Arabs, are “deficits of freedom,” including lack of Western-style political, religious, minority and women’s rights and the prevalence of corrupt, oppressive, unrepresentative governments...

In the past three years, De Paul university has:

* hired a notoriously anti-Semitic and unscholarly professor;
* fired a professor for advocating a factual approach to the Middle East; and
* sponsored an anti-Semitic art exhibit with "scholarly" captions that misstate history.

ACTION
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Write to the President of DePaul University asking that he convene a panel of disinterested scholars from other universities to look into the situation at DePaul and to determine why the university has three times taken positions antithetical to the high standards of scholarly rigor expected of American Universities. And ask why in these three cases where Jewish issues were involved, the commitment to uphold evidence-based standards of fact was ignored.

At one time, the entire Arab world refused to recognize the state of Israel and called for its destruction as Hamas does today. Yet Egypt and Jordan now recognize the Jewish state, and all the rest of the Arab League have committed themselves to doing so in principle if something approximating the 1967 borders can be restored...

Commenting on the decision, the Board's Chief Executive, Jon Benjamin said "The EIAG consulted with us, the office of the Chief Rabbi and others within the Jewish community, as well as with those who advocated economic sanctions. We are particularly pleased that this matter had a proper airing and that the decision was made on the basis of all of the facts and of the positive developments in the region."

He added "All too often, campaigns for divestment and boycotts have been driven by misinformation or by the most superficial assessment of the actual situation on the ground. When the true position is explained, the inappropriateness of economic sanctions is exposed."

"Simon Wiesenthal was the conscience of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the International Human Rights NGO named in Mr. Wiesenthal’s honor, adding, "When the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the whole world went home to forget, he alone remained behind to remember. He did not forget. He became the permanent representative of the victims, determined to bring the perpetrators of the history’s greatest crime to justice. There was no press conference and no president or Prime Minister or world leader announced his appointment. He just took the job. It was a job no one else wanted.

The task was overwhelming. The cause had few friends. The Allies were already focused on the Cold War, the survivors were rebuilding their shattered lives and Simon Wiesenthal was all alone, combining the role of both prosecutor and detective at the same time."

Overcoming the world’s indifference and apathy, Simon Wiesenthal helped bring over 1,100 Nazi War Criminals before the Bar of Justice.

About 400 white families are still farming in Zimbabwe, following the seizure by President Robert Mugabe's government of more than 4 000 farms.

Mutasa, one of Mr Mugabe's closest advisers, referred to Operation Murambatsvina ("Clean out the trash" in Shona) -- the campaign in which the government destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of urban poor.

"Operation Murambatsvina should also be applied to the land reform programme to clean the commercial farms that are still in the hands of white farmers. White farmers are dirty and should be cleared out. They are similar to the filth that was in the streets before Murambatsvina," said Mutasa, according to the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper...

Mugabe questioned why his government was criticised for demolitions that left up to an estimated 700 000 people homeless while Britain and Habitat, the Nairobi-based UN agency, remained silent about the US government's response to Hurricane Katrina...

The goal is to broaden understanding of Islam so students feel less threatened by it and its followers -- and to erase those negative stereotypes they might have about Muslims.

''We don't have the most privileged students," Mitchell said. ''Some of them are going through life with certain attitudes."

If that prejudice persists, he said, it could lead those students to make poor decisions in the way they vote for president, spend tax dollars, or raise their kids.

Nearly two dozen faculty members from across the college will attend five seminars during the next two years so they can learn to teach about pluralism in Islam. The faculty seminars will focus on four Islamic societies: Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia.

''Within each of these Islamic societies, as in Christianity, there is a whole spectrum of faith and political ideals," Mitchell said.

At the same time, the college is introducing beginning courses in Arabic, and will eventually add four other courses that will help students understand the religious and political differences that exist within Islam in various countries.

''It's the fastest-growing religion in the world," Mitchell said. ''It can be more progressive than Christianity in its treatment of women."...

The attackers set fire to the women’s dormitory and knock- ed down a gate fronting the Ahmadiyah complex as its followers looked on helplessly. Some 300 policemen were on guard but failed to prevent the attack.

Shortly after, Emilia Renita, 38, a Shia Muslim in Jakarta started receiving threatening messages on her mobile phone saying: "Shias are deviant. Their blood is halal."

"I was shocked. I am Muslim and yet I am threatened. What more for those who are non-Muslims?" she said.

The surge in radicalism was partly triggered by 11 decrees issued in July by the official Council of Indonesian Ulamas (MUI) which banned the Ahmadiyah, liberalism, pluralism and secularism as anti-Islam...

...3. The 217th General Assembly (2006) believes that the Overture expressed as Item 12-02 (On Calling for an End to the Construction of a Wall by the State of Israel) is too broad in scope and does not further the cause of peace. Item 12-02 is a blanket condemnation of the security wall being built by the State of Israel. The 217th General Assembly does not believe that the Presbyterian Church (USA) should tell a sovereign nation whether or how it can protect its borders or handle matters of national defense. [There follows some business about the location of the Security Fence I do not necessarily agree with, but it's better than what came before I suppose. -Sol]...

...As a matter of conscience, the congregations comprising the Presbytery of Mississippi cannot support divestment as an economic sanction against American companies legally doing business in Israel and/or Palestine. The underlying purpose of divestment is to inflict economic hardship and harm on companies doing business in Israel or Palestine. In clear cases – like genocide or apartheid – such action can be justified. In the present situation, however, where there is justice and injustice on both sides, it is unjustified and inappropriate.

The price of phased selective divestment falls disproportionately on one party to this conflict, namely Israel. Such remedies do not make for peace. The use of economic sanctions as a weapon in peacemaking puts the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the position of a judge passing judgment and imposing a sentence rather than a partner for peace. To rank and file members of the church, it appears arrogant, condescending, and punitive. Such actions, however well intentioned, do not make for peace...

“Racism is the only word to describe resolutions that portray the uprooting of olive trees, which can be replanted, as a bigger problem than the deaths of Israeli children who are gone forever,” says Dexter Van Zile, director of the Judeo-Christian Alliance and author of Walls of Indifference, Walls of Contempt, a report on two anti-“wall” resolutions passed by the deliberative bodies of the UCC and DOC in July.

The report details how the churches portray Israel’s security fence as the cause and not the result of Palestinian terror against Israelis. It also documents how the churches portray the inconvenience suffered by the Palestinians as a bigger problem than the loss of Israeli lives. The resolutions make no mention whatsoever of the Israeli deaths caused by terrorism, but describe in great detail the impact of the security fence on Palestinians, notes Van Zile, a member of the UCC.

“These churches could not be bothered to ask Palestinians to stop the terror attacks that made the barrier necessary,” Van Zile says...

Last week he screened Hostages of Hatred at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on the Upper West Side. The film looks at how Arab states, the Palestinian elites and the United Nations have all been instrumental in keeping Palestinians festering in refugee camps since 1948.

It has been a mainstay of Arab propaganda since 1948 that the Jews kicked the Arabs out of Palestine. But Rehov presents Arab newspaper and magazine accounts from both before and after the war of 1948 documenting Arab leadership's many calls to Arab citizens of Palestine to get out before the impending war started.

Those citizens were assured that they would be able to return to their homes within two or three weeks, after the Jews had been defeated. It didn't play that way, of course, and unlike all the other refugees from wars of the 1940s, those who had fled have been kept in squalid, hatred–breeding refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Gaza for more than a half-century.

The UN oil-for-food scandal pales in comparison to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which was set up ostensibly to serve the Palestinian people but which has more than anything else become a work program for 22,000 permanent UN workers...

The soldiers conduct neighborhood-watch-like patrols in Algiers to assist local authorities to find out "how people are doing" after the storm, explained Army Capt. Kenton R. Barber, Battery A's 28-year-old executive officer...

...Alexcener Reaux, a 74-year-old townhouse resident on Murl Street who stayed on through the storm, said she's glad the soldiers are around. "I feel safer; I go to bed and sleep good," she said.

A helicopter came to evacuate her after the storm, but Reaux said she refused to leave because the aircraft scared her. Two days later, Reaux's daughter arrived to take care of her.

Pfc. Oliver D. Butler, 19, said he helps distribute food, water and other items during the day to Algiers residents at a local mission.

"It's a catastrophe that's happened in this area," Butler said. Helping Algiers residents get back on their feet "makes me feel good inside," he said...

In the words of one committee member, ''The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others."

That ''one people," of course, are the Jews...

Our opening dossier – Pallywood – is an exercise in pointing out that the emperor is naked. Evidence we will make available to the cyber-public suggests that our news desks regularly receive staged scenes of fighting and injury filmed by Palestinian cameramen using Western equipment. Rather than delete them or fire the cameramen for gross violations of journalistic standards, editors cut the obviously fake parts and run a medley of plausible sight-bytes as real news.

If any graduate student in medieval history came with a draft that treated its sources as credulously as our media have done in this case, he or she would not make it through the first semester...

... What’s going on here? Is this a joke? Judging from the smiles of both the actors and the cameramen that follow successful “takes,” yes. And the joke is on us.

How long has Pallywood been going on? We cannot say, partly because, so far, the MSM will not re-examine their own rushes, nor let outsiders see them. But the material we have suggests a widespread and common practice that probably began in the 1980s and continues today.

Now, it is one thing for Palestinian journalists to behave in this manner. Many openly admit that the media represent a battlefield for them and they subordinate its values to their cause. But why would Western media clean up these fakes and present them as news?...

...Watch Pallywood. You will laugh, but you may also cry.

Though dismissed widely, the best strategy for the United States may well be to acknowledge and address the collective reasons in which Al Qaeda anchors its acts of force...

In the end, Mohamedou says, "these 'terrorists' are de facto combatants, and justice . . . is what they are after." Which is the true source of bin Laden's strength. And the reason that "no leading Muslim intellectual or scholar has denounced him."

Not at Harvard, anyhow.

But they said the United States and the EU believed they had the support of at least 20 countries on the 35-member board, which meets beginning on Monday. One option being discussed was to put forward a resolution but hold off a vote for two or three weeks to give Iran a final chance to halt uranium conversion.

Nuclear powers Russia, China, India and Pakistan are all reluctant to back a referral and diplomats say Iran, the world's second-biggest oil producer, is convinced it has the upper hand and has little to fear from the Security Council.

The council has the power to take action against Iran ranging from a verbal slap on the wrist to a total trade ban.

IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei has urged the Western powers to wait but the diplomats said delay would only embolden Iran to push on towards nuclear fuel enrichment having "got away" with the precursor phase of uranium conversion.

Besides, the diplomatic arithmetic would get tougher when more nonaligned nations join the IAEA board later this month...

The pseudo-oracle is Tanya Reinhart, a former student of Noam Chomsky's and an emeritus professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who now teaches at the University of Utrecht. She writes an occasional political column for Israel's largest daily newspaper, and she's the author of a book entitled Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948. To call Reinhart a post-Zionist, or even an anti-Zionist, doesn't do her justice. She has made the reviling of Israel an art form, on behalf of an appreciative audience who thrill to her every denunciation and condemnation. The late Edward Said called her book "the most devastating critique now available of Israel's policy toward the Palestinian people," and that says a lot...

More than 30 places of higher education are named in the study by Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, as having been infiltrated by “extremist and/or terror groups.” Radical groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, banned from university campuses because of their extremism and anti-Semitism, were found still to be operating under different names.

The report also detailed far-right and animal-rights groups. “This is a serious threat,” Glees told the Guardian newspaper. “We have discovered a number of universities where subversive activities are taking place, often without the knowledge of the university authorities.”

On Friday September 16th at 11:30 AM MAS Freedom Foundation will hold a press conference at the State House, along with the Islamic Society of Boston, MIRA, ACLU, ADC, American Friends Service committee, and the Students of Northeastern University, Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Tufts University, Salem State,Wellesley, and Suffolk University, to address the Governors comments.

In remarks that caused alarm among civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants rights, Romney said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation that the United States needs to radically rethink how it guards itself against terrorism.

''How many individuals are coming to our state and going to those institutions who have come from terrorist-sponsored states?" he said, referring to foreign students who attend universities in Massachusetts. ''Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them?"

''How about people who are in settings -- mosques, for instance -- that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror," Romney continued. ''Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping? Are we following what's going on?"...

''It's something that shouldn't happen," Yaich said. ''If they're going to do surveillance, why not do it for synagogues and churches, too?"...

Earlier in the day US President George W. Bush told Sharon there will be no further steps in the diplomatic process if Gaza is not quiet.

According to Israeli officials who participated in the 45-minute meeting, Bush told Sharon that from the US perspective Gaza is a test ground, and for there to be any further progress the Palestinians must ensure quiet, security and proper governance.

Bush also told Sharon the US would press the Egyptians to take control of the Egyptian-Gaza border, which has been open since the IDF's withdrawal from Gaza on Monday. Bush said he would impress upon the Egyptians and the Palestinian Authority the need to take effective control of the border.

During the meeting, Sharon described the anarchic situation reigning in Gaza in general, and along the Gaza-Egyptian border in particular...

Israeli officials said that was the extent of the "chance" meeting that had been anticipated since Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met his Pakistani counterpoint, Khursheed Kasuri, some three weeks ago in Turkey...

The pure silliness and risibility of the thing would have been quite beyond one's power of invention. And, oh, just to be present when they finally meet. Jane can shyly tell George, who yells daily about the rape of Jerusalem by Zionism, of the brave days in 1982 when she and Tom Hayden went to entertain Gen. Sharon's invading troops in Lebanon. He can huskily and modestly discuss (he says he's a great admirer of her role in Barefoot in the Park) his long record as one of Britain's leading pro-life politicians, and his more recent outrage at the judicial "murder" of Terri Schiavo.

Jane Fonda, who the last I heard was in the throes of a post-orgasmic spiritual transfiguration, was a byword for ditziness even on the left when I was young, and she now issues apologies for her past politics almost as rapidly as Barbarella changed positions. Galloway, however, is nothing if not grimly consistent. Here, just for an example, is what he said as recently as July, after speaking at the Al-Assad Library in the Syrian capital of Damascus, about the host after whose foul dynasty that library is named:

We covered the whole world in 60 minutes. I was very impressed by his knowledge, by his sharpness, by his flexible mind. I was very, very impressed. … Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.

Not that the Syrian people had any say in their good fortune, in being passed from the rule of a megalomaniac father to a feeble son. And not that anyone in Syria is permitted to disagree when Galloway comes to give one of his speeches. More serious still, it had been on the preceding Feb. 14 that Rafik Hariri, a former elected prime minister of Lebanon, was murdered by a bomb of military-grade force. The U.N. investigator of this odious crime, Detlev Mehlis, has since caused the arrests of four senior pro-Syrian Lebanese officers. This week, he travels to Damascus to pursue his inquiries to the source. Bashar Assad, who had been planning to fly to address the United Nations, has decided not to show his weak, slobbering face in New York after all. All or most of this was known or at the least seriously suspected when Galloway went for his asshole dialogue with Assad in July, and also delivered an asshole monologue of his own. Indeed, the outrage in Lebanon had already led to a Syrian "withdrawal," even though Syria still does not recognize the existence of Lebanon as a state. Galloway publicly deplored this withdrawal, saying that Syria's presence in Lebanon was "legal," which it was not after the Taif Accords of more than a decade ago, and adding that "the beneficiary from the absence of Syria is the US and Israel."...

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas visited the former settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip, where he declared that the Israel did not leave behind any synagogues. "There are no synagogues here," he said. [Well, not anymore there aren't. -Sol]

"Israel left behind some empty buildings which that are likely to collapse. All the public buildings they left are in danger of collapsing," he said...

Defending the decision to raze the synagogues, Haniyeh said Israel was trying to keep them to put pressure on the PA to protect them in the future. "These synagogues were built for political, not religious, reasons. They were built illegally and should go away with the occupation."

Meanwhile, a number of armed groups in the Gaza Strip announced that they would continue to launch attacks on Israel until it withdraws from more territories.

The armed wing of Fatah announced that it was planning to launch attacks inside Israel "until all our lands are liberated." Muhamemd Hijazi, commander of one of the Fatah- affiliated militias in the Gaza Strip, said his men were planning suicide attacks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba...

At 2am tracer bullets darted over Gaza City as Palestinian soldiers saluted the fires that were springing up against the southern sky. The settlements were burning; after 38 years of, at best, strained coexistence, the Israelis were gone.

In the first grey light before the dawn Ahmed Talalka was already exhausted. The unemployed 20-year-old sprawled by a path in what, until hours before, had been the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, an Israeli enclave inserted hard against the southern outskirts of Gaza City.

"When I got here it was 12.30 and already there was no one, so we went straight to the synagogue and set it on fire," he said.

Ahmad Thomson, from the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said Mr Blair was the latest in a long line of politicians to have been influenced by the group which saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as a way to control the Middle East.

A Government spokesman confirmed last night that ministers and officials consulted Mr Thomson on issues concerning Muslims but refused to be drawn on his views. "We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with," she said...

"When the people in a predominantly Jewish society cease to worship God, the result is either communism or capitalism. A predominantly Christian society is concerned primarily with establishing a political ideology, whilst a predominantly Jewish society is concerned primarily with establishing an economic system."

This, he suggested, led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Mr Thomson, who was called to the bar in 1979, wrote: "The fascism of Hitler was the Christian element in the increasingly "Jewish" environment in which he and his followers found themselves."

He also wrote that the Jews have no right to live in "the Holy Land" because they are not a pure race and therefore not the true biblical Israelites and that Saddam was used as an excuse for US troops - "including thousands of Jews" - to occupy Saudi Arabia...

At dawn, cars waved on by smiling Palestinian policemen sped down a road that the Israeli Army had blocked for five years, to the former settlement of Netzarim. There, a woman loaded scrap metal from a demolished Israeli guard tower onto a donkey cart while Palestinian police in blue camouflage lounged under trees. Nearby, black-masked Islamic Jihad militants and teenagers on bicycles surveyed the smoking rubble as a bulldozer tore into the pillars of a domed synagogue which had been burned overnight.

''I'm happy," said Fares Wahaidi, 56, whose house stands yards from the gap in the barbed-wire fence leading to the settlement. ''I didn't sleep all night."

''Today is the day of liberation," said Ehab al-Baz, 21, a supporter of the Islamic militant group Hamas who lives in the neighboring refugee camp of Nusseirat. ''We must make a new Gaza, a free Gaza, an Islamic Gaza."...

There is a wider story here also. We are vulnerable to video lies. Against purposeful lies, truth has never been so helpless, so weakly defended.

More than 500 Israeli civilians have been killed in the intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began five years ago. They were ordinary people chatting on a bus, eating ice cream in a restaurant; suddenly, a bright flash. The next moment the walls are spattered with blood and the bomb's hellish odor fills the air. Some people are blinded, others are cut to pieces. Parents living the worst seconds of their lives cast about wildly for their children in the screaming, smoky chaos.

What explains such bestial crimes? The reported death of a Palestinian child, Mohammed Dura, in Gaza did as much as anything else to ignite the current uprising. In the short video segment produced on Sept. 30, 2000, and distributed immediately, a state-owned French television station called France 2 accused the Israeli army of deliberately shooting and killing the 12-year-old.

You may remember the footage: A man and boy crouch in fear. Shots hit a wall far from the pair; a final round of gunfire kicks up a dust cloud that hides father and son, who are "targets of gunfire from Israeli positions," says the voice-over. When the dust clears, the boy is stretched at the man's feet. The voice says that he is dead.

This version of the story was retold around the world — and it has figured in countless wall posters, an Al Qaeda recruiting video, an epic poem. Last June an aspiring suicide bomber was arrested on her way to a hospital — to kill Israeli children, she said, in memory of Mohammed Dura.

BUT, ACCORDING to the Commentary article, the video is a fraud. The footage itself is ambiguous, the alleged main event hidden by dust. The voice-over is what makes us understand what we are seeing. It comes from Charles Enderlin, a correspondent at France 2 (and a French Jew who became an Israeli citizen 20 years ago). Enderlin has never claimed to have been anywhere near the scene of the alleged shooting. His Palestinian cameraman told him the story...

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

The draft proposals have been prepared by committees appointed by Blair to tackle extremism. He has promised to respond to the plans, but the threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the Jewish community.

Holocaust Day was established by Blair in 2001 after a sustained campaign by Jewish leaders to create a lasting memorial to the 6m victims of Hitler. It is marked each year on January 27.

The Queen is patron of the charity that organises the event and the Home Office pays £500,000 a year to fund it. The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims.

This is great: the task force on how to combat extremism recommends, "More dhimmi groveling and appeasement."

The Saudis also commit themselves to obeying WTO trade rules in regard to all member countries of the organization, including Israel. This does not mean that Saudi Arabia is abandoning the Arab boycott against Israel, but it does limit the scope of the boycott.

"This [agreement] represents progress for Saudi Arabia, the US and the WTO", said a statement put out Friday by US trade representative Rob Portman.

One of the conditions set by the US for signing a trade agreement with Saudi Arabia was abandoning the boycott against Israel and the final wording of the agreement is a result of lengthy negotiations on this issue.

A group of 47 US congressmen sent a letter to president Bush, calling upon him not to sign a new agreement with Saudi Arabia before the boycott issue is resolved. The lawmakers also said the US should use this moment to demand Saudi actions in the fields of human rights and religious freedom...

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

...“We must not accept their culture of lies, but we must be familiar with it,” he said. “They are our partners for better or for worse. Lately, it was more on the ‘worse’ side.”

When asked to provide concrete examples for his charges, Dichter shared two stories.

“In October 2001 we sat with the Palestinians in the presence of CIA Director George Tenet and Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman. We submitted a list of 114 terrorists who were in Palestinian prisons and but were released when the intifada started. Jibril Rajoub (currently the PA’s national security advisor), who was in the meeting, knew the details were accurate, but his colleague, Yasser Abed Rabbo, insisted that all of them were still in jail. As the argument continued, I suggested that Abed Rabbo put down a 100 dollar bill for every name of the list that’s in jail. Abed Rabbo replied: ‘I don’t occupy myself with money.’”

“Another, more serious example, was when Yasser Arafat pledged to President Bush that an activist who fired mortars was detained…I arrived at a meeting and heard the news from the Palestinians: ‘Avi, you can be certain, the man is in prison,’ Abu Ala (Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia) told me. PA negotiator Saeb Erekat added: ‘definitely.’

“The thing is, Jibril Rajoub attended that meeting, and he knew the man wasn’t in jail, he knew that I know that the man isn’t in jail, and he knew that I know that he knows the man isn’t in jail. When he was asked whether the man was detained he replied ‘sort of’ – covering the entire range between yes and no. The next day, that man reached heavens after a missile hit his car in Bethlehem.”...

A Navy board of inquiry concluded that there is no credible evidence that Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher is dead, and it reaffirmed his official status as "missing/captured," according to the board's final report.

The board also recommended that the Pentagon work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government to "increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq" to resolve the question of Speicher's fate...

The story featured a young man named Chris Towne who had just returned from four weeks in the Palestinian territories under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), in a program called the Palestine Summer Encounter. But the News- Times' failed to meet journalistic standards when it described the ISM program as providing an opportunity to "work with Palestinian non-profit organizations."

In fact, Palestine Summer Encounter participants are political activists in an organization that endorses terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish State. They spend their time in aggressive demonstrations involving such "actions" as dismantling security barriers and impeding police searches for bomb factories and the arrest of known terrorists.

Young Mr. Towne returned from his summer experience imbued with hatred for Israel, and "unabashed" in his enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause. The News-Times printed the Palestinian propaganda Towne gave them as straight news, even though it included many half-truths and a number of outright untruths...

In the email, Qumsiyeh wrote that "the U.S. occupation of Iraq illegal and immoral (sic)" and that the YCP should "continue to challenge the hegemony of the U.S. on the Arab world." Although such opinions are certainly acceptable and even welcomed at a university that encourages the exchange of ideas, Qumsiyeh closed his email with a chilling statement: "I include here the list of members of Yale Students 'for Democracy,' the pro war cabal . . . I think you will find the list informative. Note that there is significant overlap of this list with the 'Yale Friends of Israel' listserve."

Qumsiyeh then listed the Yale email addresses of 64 students, which contained students' full names, whom he claimed belonged to Yale College Students for Democracy (YCSD), a group that supported the war in Iraq.

However, the people he listed belonged not to YCSD, but to the Yale Friends of Israel (YFI) itself...

The dossier includes 93 alleged incidents of abuse by an "Islamic fundamentalist mafia" against Palestinian Christians, who accused the Palestinian Authority of doing nothing to stop the attacks.

The dossier also includes a list of 140 cases of apparent land theft, in which Christians in the West Bank were allegedly forced off their land by gangs backed by corrupt judicial officials.

From the birthplace of Christ at Bethlehem to the site of his Crucifixion in Jerusalem, Christian Church leaders have long been desperate not to upset the delicate ethnic and sectarian balance in the region by blaming either Jews or Muslims for the decline of their once robust religious community.

That self-imposed silence now appears to be crumbling...

This summer, the UCC and the DOC passed resolutions insisting that Israel stop building a fence around the West Bank, dismantle portions already constructed, and pay reparations to Palestinians whose lives have been impacted by its path. The resolutions did not ask Palestinians to end the suicide attacks that made the barrier necessary; indeed they make no mention whatsoever of the Israeli deaths these attacks have caused. The churches offer words of condemnation to Israel for building a barrier to stop terror attacks, which when perpetrated in London, elicit words of comfort.

To these churches, attacks against Israelis are tolerable; attacks against Londoners are not. Palestinian hardship weighs more than Jewish lives...

To judge by his public statements and writings, Mr. Lowenthal's idea of a faithful Jew is someone who opposes the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, supports gay rights, abortion and euthanasia, and demands a strong separation of church and state. After all, as Mr. Lowenthal concluded approvingly in a July op-ed for the Jewish Advocate, Jews are "the most liberal" and "the least religious people in America."

Imagine his consternation when an avalanche of emails from Russian Jews began to pour in to the Web site of the Jewish Russian Telegraph, a daily blog, in response to his article. About 100 people wrote to say that Mr. Lowenthal needed to stop making "outrageous statements" on behalf of people whom he doesn't represent.

Alex Koifman, who arrived in the U.S. from Belarus in 1978, and whom Mr. Lowenthal trained for his position as a board member at the Boston AJC, criticized his old teacher for overstepping his bounds, saying: "Since when are these concerns [abortion, gay rights, and church-state separation] concerns that are specific to the Jewish community? These are the Left's concerns."...

The attack on the village of 1,500 was triggered by the murder of a Muslim woman from the nearby village of Deir Jarir earlier this week. The 30-year-old woman, according to PA security sources, was apparently murdered by members of her family for having had a romance with a Christian man from Taiba.

"When her family discovered that she had been involved in a forbidden relationship with a Christian, they apparently forced her to drink poison," said one source. "Then they buried her without reporting her death to the relevant authorities."...

..."More than 500 Muslim men, chanting Allahu akbar [God is great], attacked us at night," said a Taiba resident. "They poured kerosene on many buildings and set them on fire. Many of the attackers broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry and electrical appliances."...

..."It was like a war, they arrived in groups, and many of them were holding clubs," said another resident.

"Some people saw them carrying weapons. They first attacked houses belonging to the Khoury family [looking for the man who had the affair with the women, not realizing he had already fled the village.] Then they went to their relatives. They entered the houses and destroyed everything there...

The former Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy suggested that close relatives of the four suicide bombers should sit alongside the families of the 52 victims at the special service in St Paul's Cathedral.

His comments were echoed by Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, who said that it would be "offensive" if relatives of the bombers were turned away from the service on Nov 1.

Mr Waite, who was held hostage in Beirut from 1987 to 1991, said in an interview on BBC Radio 2: "The parents definitely should be involved in the service because in a different way they are victims themselves."...

Brian Coleman, the Tory deputy chairman of the London Assembly, labelled the idea of bombers' families attending as "political correctness gone mad".

Fonda will also be making only two appearances this month on another tour with controversial British politician George Galloway, not eight appearances as was widely misreported in the press yesterday. [oh gee, that matters...not]

Why the change of plans? Certainly, Fonda is still very much against the war in Iraq and in favor of helping our troops there. But she said that she didn't want to distract people from Cindy Sheehan's bus trip, which is already under way and gathering support...

...Fonda will appear with Galloway - who is vehemently anti-George Bush - in Madison, Wis., on Sept. 18 and in Chicago, Ill., on Sept 19. She told me that "what the right wing has done to Sheehan is despicable."

Her own decision not to stage a bus tour came because she wants Sheehan to succeed without messages being mixed.

"I would be a distraction," she said, "and the vacuum has been filled. That said, I plan to speak out and write some op-ed pieces, but no bus tour."...

Nearly five years later, however, Dura says he has tired of mouthing the counterproductive mottos of Palestinian hard-liners. Instead, with Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last month, he has turned to building a grand new home for his eight surviving children and he has forbidden his eldest son from joining any militant movement, at least until he finishes university.

''One martyr from this family is enough," Dura, 43, said at his home in Bureij...

...The Palestinian Authority had promised to restrain militant factions and make sure the Israelis didn't pull out under fire. But, according to the Israeli military, Palestinians opened fire 18 times during the disengagement, lightly wounding two soldiers. They also launched two Qassam rockets and fired 10 mortar shells, while Israel foiled three separate planned bombs...

...''Celebrate the achievement of your martyrdom," thundered Hamas official Subhi Rasheed, the imam at Friday prayers in Jabaliya, a refugee camp north of Gaza City. ''The Jews will never stop assassinating you unless the Islamic nation is strong."

Such rhetoric has long been the staple of places like Jabaliya, which is nicknamed ''The Citadel of the Martyr Warriors" because its youths have long fed the factional Palestinian militias, mostly Hamas and Fatah.

''Citadel of fools is more like it," declared Jamal abu Nasser, the owner of a taxi fleet whose dispatch center is across the street from the main Hamas mosque in Jabaliya...

Livingstone comes from the far left and recruited nearly all his advisers from a minuscule Trotskyist faction which gathered around the Socialist Action newspaper. They were 'third worldists', as we used to say, activists who had despaired of the British working class ever obeying the orders of their Leninist betters and therefore supported any movement in the Third World, however barbaric, as long as it said it was socialist.

What is new is that since the death of socialism, they are prepared to indulge the extreme religious right as long at it is anti-American. The reflex is essentially the same, as is the delusion that these are in some way 'progressive' forces.

Now it seems the fantasy has spread to the Foreign Office. Documents obtained by this newspaper show that the mandarins have been preparing for an accommodation with radical Islam...

...The leaked papers show FO mandarins in a land of make-believe. Running through this thinking is an aching need to believe that Qaradawi is a liberal, a peculiar liberal, no doubt, but still a man with whom Britain can do business. The Foreign Secretary may remember the negative media storm when Livingstone last brought the priest to Britain, the civil servants tell Jack Straw. He should ignore it. The accusations came from tainted Jewish sources, 'the Board of [Jewish] Deputies' and the Israeli monitoring site Memri, which is 'regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports'.

This simply isn't true. Qaradawi's extremist views haven't been spread by scheming Jews but are well documented on his very own website...

But in 1995 the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 was unconstitutional because what the act criminalized -- possession of a firearm in or near a school -- was purely intrastate in nature and its effect, if any, on interstate commerce was negligible. The principal dissent, by Justice Stephen Breyer, argued that a gun might produce violence that would affect the economy by, among other things, injuring the learning environment, resulting in a less productive citizenry.

Do you, Sen. Schumer, support that reasoning? If so, does not Congress have the power to promote a healthy and productive citizenry by requiring flossing and regulating homework? Does it matter to you that the original intent of the commerce clause was to ensure the free movement of goods and services among the states? Do you think that Madison, the foremost Framer of the Constitution, misunderstood the Constitution?...

We waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming force. Went in with police powers, 1,000 National Guard military policemen under the command and control of the adjutant general of the State of Louisiana, Major General Landreneau, yesterday shortly after noon stormed the convention center, for lack of a better term, and there was absolutely no opposition, complete cooperation, and we attribute that to an excellent plan, superbly executed with great military precision. It was rather complex. It was executed absolutely flawlessly in that there was no violent resistance, no one injured, no one shot, even though there were stabbed, even though there were weapons in the area. There were no soldiers injured and we did not have to fire a shot.

Some people asked why didn't we go in sooner. Had we gone in with less force it may have been challenged, innocents may have been caught in a fight between the Guard military police and those who did not want to be processed or apprehended, and we would put innocents' lives at risk. As soon as we could mass the appropriate force, which we flew in from all over the states at the rate of 1,400 a day, they were immediately moved off the tail gates of C-130 aircraft flown by the Air National Guard, moved right to the scene, briefed, rehearsed, and then they went in and took this convention center down...

...The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans. Once that assessment was made, that the normal 1500 man police force in New Orleans was substantially degraded, which contributed obviously to less police presence and less police capability, then the requirement became obvious and that's when we started flowing military police into the theater...

Q: General, you mentioned a disintegration of the New Orleans Police Department. Do you know how many officers are still on duty?

GEN. BLUM: I would rather not say. I think you'd be better to refer that question to the mayor of New Orleans. I have my own estimate. I would say they are significantly degraded and they have less than one-third of their original capability.

...

Q: What happened to the other police, general?

GEN. BLUM: Again, that can be best addressed, but what was told to me by the Mayor day before yesterday is many of them lost their homes, many of them lost ability to get to the precinct, many of them who did show up found what they were dealing with so overwhelming and dangerous or threatening to them as an individual that they made the personal decision to not risk their life until the situation made more sense to them. That was an individual decision, it was not the police chief's decision or the mayor's decision. I think that the mayor and police chief are working right now to reconstitute the New Orleans Police Department, but that question would much better be addressed to them for detail...

Palestinians still live in refugee camps, even when the camps are in Palestinian Authority controlled areas, because the PLO opposes and prevents refugee resettlement. As the PLO slogan goes, A Palestinian refugee never moves out of his camp except to return home (ie, to Israel).

While the PLO has done its best to keep Palestinians in refugee camps, Israel has done its best to move Palestinians out of the camps and into new homes. Israel even started a heavily subsidized “build-your-own-home” program for Palestinian refugees. According to an early description of the program:

Nine new residential schemes have been built so far, housing some ten thousand families that have chosen to vacate the camps. Each family was given a plot of land with full infrastructure...

... As soon as his house is built, the refugee becomes the full property owner, and in due course his property is registered in the Land Register. (Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District, 1967 – 1987; Israel, Ministry of Defense, 1987)

The vacated homes in the refugee camps were taken down with the goal of eventually creating enough open space so that the camps themselves could be rebuilt as further new neighborhoods for the refugees.

It’s not surprising that the PLO vehemently opposed this program – after all, former residents of a refugee camp, now living in a nice home in a new neighborhood, would have a stake in supporting peace and opposing violence, exactly the opposite of the PLO’s strategy.

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:

Calls once more upon Israel:

(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:

measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;

1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. After a few such attacks, the build-your-own-home program died, and that is why there are still Palestinians refugee camps in Gaza...

The defendants and AIPAC supporters see the new revelations as evidence that federal prosecutors are targeting the powerful pro-Israel lobby for simply conducting the normal Washington practice of trading sensitive information. Officials inside and outside government privately acknowledge that classified information routinely changes hands among influential people in the foreign policy community and that the exchanges often are advantageous to diplomats.

“If, in fact, Satterfield passed on classified information that other people should not have had, then they should all be guilty of the same thing,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “The fact that Satterfield hasn’t been prosecuted suggests that’s not the case.”...

The committee said in a statement that Pakistan's decision was tantamount to "a stab in the back of the Palestinians and their national struggle to liberate their lands, first and foremost the Aksa Mosque, and to achieve the right of return for all refugees." ...

Also attending the press conference will be Muslims who were evacuated from New Orleans and the surrounding area.

"There are three basic components to our work," stated MAS Freedom
Foundation Executive Director Mahdi Bray.

"To encourage Muslims to open their mosques and homes to victims as well as adopting a family and renting an apartment for displaced families. Second, to collect and assist with the distribution of food and other consumable necessities to shelters and other temporary lodging facilities. And lastly, to insure that Islamic Relief has the resources to provide the high caliber assistance that they have provided throughout the years to victims of natural catastrophes here in the United States and abroad."

"It is critical that we all pull together to help the thousands of Muslims and their neighbors who have been devastated by Katrina," concluded Bray.

Vadim Kouznetsov, who heads the General Assembly panel that oversees the U.N. budget, was the second Russian U.N. official to be arrested by the FBI for alleged money laundering in recent weeks.

The charges were contained in a sealed grand jury indictment. Kouznetsov was to be arraigned Friday in Manhattan Federal Court.

The official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the indictment is sealed, said the charges involve money laundering and are only remotely connected to the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq that is the target of numerous corruption investigations...

Down: There are regulations. At the time how they were interpreted, very strictly pre-9/11, for destruction of information which is embedded, I guess is the way I would say it, that would contain any information on U.S. persons. In a major data mining effort like this you're reaching out to a lot of open sources and within that there could be a lot of information on U.S. persons. We're not allowed to collect that type of information. So there are strict regulations about collection, dissemination, destruction procedures for this type of information. And we know that that did happen in the case of Able Danger documentation.

Media: So it's possible then that this is how the chart cannot be found. Along with other documents, they could have been destroyed and that's why you can't corroborate what these people are saying or say it's wrong.

Down: Correct.

Media: What is the definition for U.S. person?

Down: I wish we had our lawyer here.

Chope: A U.S. citizen or someone who is in the country legally.

Media: So a tourist is a U.S. person.

Chope: Can be.

Media: Under what circumstances?

Chope: For instance on a work visa. I think it's more than just a tourist, on a work visa or something like that...

...Media: Has anything changed about the way that U.S. persons who get sucked up in a data mining operation would be handled today as opposed to how they might have -- completely independent of this. Say if my name gets sucked up into a database tomorrow morning would it be handled differently today than it would have before 9/11?

Down: My understanding is that the same procedures are in place. We may exercise some flexibility, but I have to be careful here because the same procedures, the same regulations, they are still accurate. We have to be very careful of what we protect against U.S. persons...

...Media: All these questions about Able Danger seem to sound like how could you possibly have missed Mohammed Attah did this, but I'm wondering if Mohammed Attah came in under the same circumstances at the same time tomorrow, he would still be of the same class. Wouldn't they get ditched, thrown out? Not that that's what happened with this, but if you were to tag him as a U.S. person wouldn't he automatically be thrown out of the data base tomorrow just as --

Chope: I don't know...

Two meetings have been scheduled for September 18 and 19 to discuss the demands of the Jews from Arab countries and to bring to the forefront a political swap.

Iraqi-born Jew Mordechai Ben-Porat, chairman of Israel's Center for the Heritage of Babylonian Jewry, organized the first meeting.

"The Jews left behind hospitals, schools, cemeteries, shopping markets," said Ben-Porat, who had been a leader of the Zionist underground movement in Iraq from its inception in 1942 until he immigrated to Israel in 1945...

...The goal of the project is political and for that reason, Professor Heskel Haddad of THe World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) maintains support for the cause.

"It will help Israel in the peace negotiations," he said. "The idea is to make an exchange. Arab countries will not compensate Jews who left Iraq and Israel will not compensate the Palestinian refugees."

The Iraqi Jewish community was among the largest Jewish Diaspora communities in the Arab world, numbering some 140,000, but most of the community left Iraq between 1950 and 1952, after the creation of the State of Israel. They left behind homes, businesses and large pieces of land. Most of those assets were frozen, some were taken by the government and some were sold...

In one video, dated August 8 2005, the group says that viewers are about to see a “demonstration of the high explosives device, that we will use in the name of Allah.

“This was recorded somewhere in Sweden,” says a message on the video in yellow letters against military camouflage colors.

A large explosion is then seen in a heavily wooded area. While it is not possible to verify the location of the explosion, the scenery does appear to be northern European.

A second video by the group, which is dated August 29, contains images of men with blurred out faces setting off mock suicide explosives and roadside car bomb attacks...

...One user on the site, who identified himself as 'Dehex,' warned that “Sweden will suffer in the name of Allah.”

Referring to a well known Swedish reverend, Runar Soogard, who is reported to be under police protection after offending Muslims with a speech about Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, Dehex wrote: “Runar Soogard had a very bad and nasty speech about our greatest prophet Mohamed.”...

The Iraqi Health Ministry on Thursday put the death toll at 843. The Interior Ministry said 953 people were killed and 815 injured, the Associated Press reported. Bodies of victims had been taken to many hospitals, mosques and private homes, making an accurate count difficult...

And honesty is what's gone out. The radical-relativists say, 'Hey, the Palestinians have their story.' Well I say, sure they have their story, and by all means listen to it. But how accurate is it? Just because you need to listen to it, doesn’t force you to believe it."...